A good year for dope?

Regular readers will know I do like to garden. I’m pleased to say my fingers (UK) and thumb (US) are pretty green – I have a nice depth and breadth of knowledge for an amateur gardener. My parents, though, will probably be pleased to note that I know almost nothing about growing marijuana.

I don’t know what kind of growing conditions marijuana needs. But just looking at it – and knowing where it grows, I’d guess it needs heat, more light than you’d find in an average basement, and a fair bit of moisture. But maybe not. Despite a bad growing season for most things in Tennessee this year, maybe Cannabis is more drought tolerant than I thought – cause it’s been a bumper year for dope in Cocke County.

Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter pilot, working with the Governor’s Task Force for Marijuana Eradication, spotted marijuana plants in a Cocke County cornfield Monday valued at half a million dollars.

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It is the largest harvest in Cocke County this year and perhaps the largest marijuana eradication in Tennessee this summer. The more than 45-hundred plants, ranging in height from eight to 15 feet tall, were collected and taken to the Cocke County Highway Department, where they were destroyed Monday evening.

William at Nashville is Talking wonders about the consequences of the Cocke County crackdown:

in a year of unprecedented drought where traditional crops have failed, how many rural farmers in Cocke Co., one of the poorest counties in TN, will not be able to feed their families?

…or indeed keep their families pacified.

Dogs and DNA

England is a nation of dog lovers, a nation of bird lovers and it used to be a nation of freedom lovers, too.

I listen to the morning news on the radio every day. I often switch it on before I get out of bed. Just me and my husband and now baby Cletus lounging in bed- maybe dosing in and out a little. Some stories capturing my ear and my imagination more than others.

This morning there was a story about how walking your dog, even on a lead, could disrupt certain bird populations. I knew that would get the wellies-and-dog-on-a-country-walk crowd in a tither*.

The next story I caught was about a judge who thought that everyone in the whole of the UK should be on the government’s DNA database (and visitors to the UK, too which ought to do wonders for the tourist industry).

Currently, if you’re arrested (for anything) the police can take a DNA sample which can be kept forever. Even if charges are dropped or you’ve been acquitted or it was a horrible case of mistaken identity. But Lord Justice Sedley wants everyone – everyone to be in the DNA database. And why? Because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

Lord Justice Sedley said the current database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible” because it was unfair and inconsistent.

You see the problem with the database – as it currently stands – is that it seems to disproportionately hold the DNA of criminals.

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As soon as the dog-and-bird story finished, folks were emailing away defending the practice of dog walking. Sure, some people registered their concerns about having everyone’s DNA on file – chiefly that if – even by mistake – a copper comes to your door saying your DNA has been found at the scene – well, that’s the absolute end of the presumption of innocence.

Others said basically “if you haven’t done anything wrong then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Yeah, right. I’ll never understand this attitude.

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* for the record, I don’t care if dogs on leads can interrupt birds. As a cat owner, I’ve already made my position on birds pretty clear.

More on the Undercover Mosque

This article pretty much exactly encapsulates my opinion on the matter:

Andrew Anthony’s Comment is Free article: When did the police start collaring television?

Channel 4’s controversial documentary Undercover Mosque was great investigative journalism. That the CPS thought it incited racial hatred beggars belief

To recap: Channel 4 commissioned a documentary on extremist preachers working in the UK and supported by Saudi Arabia. Preachers with some extremely unpleasant views. The documentary focused on a mosque in Birmingham. West Midlands Police (headquartered in Birmingham) investigated the preachers – when the couldn’t find enough evidence for a crime of incitement, they turned on the programme makers.

That radical preachers hold radical (and repugnant) views, is sadly, nothing new. That those holding extremist views are often embraced by the UK government and are given positions of responsibility – encouraging “community cohesion” is laughable if weren’t so disturbing. That the police are going after journalists for exposing them, practically acting as religious enforcers for Wahabism is terrifying.

Compstat in Nashville

Hey, did any Nashville bloggers happen to go to Metro Police’s public Compstat Meeting at David Lipscomb on Friday?

How was it?

Just curious. Please leave a comment. I’d like to ask a few question off line if I might.

On the beat

The Vol-in-Law has just returned from walking the beat with the local police – he sits on a neighbourhood panel – and this was part of his duty.

He stopped by the house halfway through – just so I could finger his kevlar (I’m still off sick).

He said it was just like The Bill (a popular British cop show) – as apparently about a month’s worth of stuff happened on his “shift”. He’s pretty hyped up – telling me about all the crime in our local area.

He was impressed by the woman police officer who was his beat officer. He said she had a real way with criminals – and was able to keep them calm. Apparently, the young crims on the street flipped out when male police officers tried to talk to them or touch them – but when a woman searched them they didn’t lose face in front of their crim friends – and so they were able to proceed without escalating the incident beyond control.

I asked if there’d been any arrests. Oh yes, he said. And the ViL told me about a guy who was arrested not so much for the dope they found on him – but for disorderly conduct. Basically, for swearing at the police. The ViL’s advice is really, to really, really never swear at the police. He said “That guy could’ve been your brother,” (implying that way his mouth got him arrested). I’ll be sure to pass that on to VolBro.

Before that incident – she told the ViL that it was time to make some arrests – so they just headed to a local discount store Primark to find some shoplifters. Apparently, it was “opening a lobster pot” – they just went to store security and rounded up the active shoplifters visible on the security cameras.

The ViL breaks cover for this photo with the local coppers

and she’s still gagging for it

I picked on Jen a little bit in my previous post. I’m bad that way. But what I really wanted to do was draw your attention to her excellent piece on rape conviction rates in the UK. I’ve written about it before, but there’s been a new study showing the same old bad news. I didn’t really have the heart to do a post on it again.

rape is an appalling topic no matter what the circumstances, but rape in the u.k. is truly horrific because only 5% of reported rape cases end in a conviction. that’s a number which has, in fact, been falling since 1977. of the cases that go to trial, one of every two ends in acquittal. in other words, a victim who manages to make it to trial has only a 50/50 crapshoot of getting to see her attacker put behind bars

and reading the reports, it’s not hard to understand why. in news item after news item, there’s just no sense that anyone in the justice system takes rape seriously. there’s a lot of talk about the number of false accusations, the difficulties of determining consent if someone’s been binge drinking, and passing the buck blame-gaming. all we hear is how hard it is to determine what happened when the two parties know each other. attempts at judicial reforms have been dismissed by judges, police incorrectly record allegations as “no crimes”, and more than a third of dropped cases have should have been pursued. but perhaps the most telling indicator of how rape is viewed and prosecuted in the u.k. is that women are still often questioned about their sexual history as part of the trial.

And there’s more…